The year was 1972, the month was July, and I was living the summer school’s-out vacation dream in the small town of Senath, Missouri that I’ve often compared to Andy Griffith’s Mayberry. How was it like Mayberry? Well, I could walk two blocks from home on an actual sidewalk and be at the four-way stop of the tiny downtown. It had a flashing red light—not an actual traffic light—and it was almost always watched over by a volunteer sheriff’s deputy whose four-door Ford Maverick sedan (in brown or pale green, as I recall) was festooned with all manner of antennae. My dad pronounced it the most well-guarded intersection in the country. He usually found the humor in any setting or situation.

Walking a block or two in any direction from the intersection would take me to the grocery store, bank, library, fire station, city hall, First Baptist Church, a furniture store owned by one of our deacons (whose wife was my first grade teacher), the post office, and a gas station owned by my dad’s best friend—a real-life Wally’s filling station that would patch the inner tubes of my bike tires. Oh, and there was a barbershop with a shoeshine boy called Kokomo who was actually middle-aged and a bit “slow.”

I was seven, and like every kid in the US in the 1970s, I had a “banana bike” with obnoxious curved handlebars. It was not a fancy Schwinn but a humble Murray or Huffy. It was built to be accessorized; it variously sported a basket, noisemakers, a bright orange flag on a fiberglass rod for safety(?), and—best of all—a combination AM radio, electronic horn, and flashing light that clamped onto the handlebars.

It was from this radio while riding down Commercial Street that I thought I received disturbing news: “The British Army has invaded Northern Iowa.” Why (besides being seven) was I inclined to believe such a thing? There was no 24-hour cable news cycle, no Twitter/X or Alex Jones, but network radio brought staticky tweet-length news bulletins quickly. And 1972 was a rough year in world events, society, and politics. Already that year I would have heard about revolutions and coups, a number of acts of terrorism, the seemingly endless Vietnam war (complete with nightly body counts on the TV news), plane crashes, and tumultuous Washington politics (Nixon) and protests. Bad news of war, strife, and turmoil was entirely believable. Of course, I had misheard.
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Brad Isbell | “Wars, rumors of wars, and instant news: Nothing new under the sun!” | Mar 4, 2025

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Post authored by:

• Brad Isbell

  

  Brad Isbell is a ruling elder at Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Oak Ridge, TN, board member of More In The PCA, co-host of the Presbycast podcast, editorial member of Presbyterian Polity, and treasurer of the Heidelberg Reformation Association.

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